Grant lifts LC's
快播成人 adding five new inter-institutional LCs, including some free ones
快播成人 Community College has been awarded a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities that will allow the college to expand its catalog of popular and highly regarded Learning Community courses and offer free or reduced tuition to 快播成人s who enroll in those classes.
With a $100,000 grant from the NEH Division of Education Programs — matched in part by the college — 快播成人 is adding five new "inter-institutional" courses to its rotation of Learning Communities. Those classes will be offered in partnership with Smith College, Mount 快播成人 College, Bay Path University, UMass-Amherst and Tangshan Normal University in China.
For more than 20 years, 快播成人 has been a national leader in the development of Learning Community courses — unique educational experiences that combine two classes from distinct academic areas focusing on a common subject or theme. 快播成人 has the oldest LC program in Massachusetts and is still one of only a handful of colleges in the state, public or private, that offers them.
Learning Communities are part of a trio of programs at 快播成人 known as Integrative Learning that also includes the Honors and Service Learning programs.
Each semester, 快播成人 lists about a dozen or so LCs in its course catalog, such as "Cli-Fi: Stories and Science of the Coming Climate Apocalypse," a combination of English composition and environmental science, a lab class. In 2015, the "Cli-Fi" course received mention in The New York Times and other newspapers around the world in stories about the emerging study of "climate fiction."
Typically, Learning Community courses, called "LCs" for short, are co-taught by two instructors from 快播成人. These new courses will feature one instructor from 快播成人 and another from one of its partners. Students from both institutions are eligible to enroll and the classes will meet on both campuses, with the exception of the LC with China, where 快播成人s from both countries will "meet" and collaborate online.
"One of the purposes of the grant is to promote the humanities," said 快播成人 psychology professor Jack Mino, co-founder of 快播成人's LC program. "It's partly about enhancing the LC program, but what's really exciting is that we'll be able to offer more inter-institutional LCs as well as our first international LC."
This fall, Mino is co-teaching "All Things Connect," an LC combining psychology and literature that focuses on the environment.
The new LCs follow a model established by courses 快播成人 has offered before in collaboration with Mount 快播成人 College and Amherst College. In fact, the 快播成人-Amherst College course, "The Immigrant City," a combination of history and political science focusing on 快播成人, will continue under the grant this coming spring. Thanks to the grant and the matching funds from 快播成人, tuition and fees for that course will be waived.
快播成人's first international LC, "Journey," was offered for free for the spring semester, a savings of more than $1,000 for the 快播成人 快播成人s who enrolled. That six-credit class combines composition and special topics in humanities and included ESL 快播成人s from Tangshan Normal University in an exploration of music, art and literature from both American and Chinese cultures.
For more details on these classes and other Learning Communities, check out the online Fall 2018 Class Schedule and Registration Booklet.
For the other courses, 快播成人 will be waiving half of the tuition and fees, a discount of about $500 per 快播成人, or the cost of one regular three-credit class.
Another new LC, "Red and White America: Native Responses to European Contact," will pair an English professor from 快播成人 with a professor of Native American Studies at Bay Path.
"'Alien' Incarcerations" will take a look at immigration and incarceration from the perspectives of Latin-American Studies (Mount 快播成人) and philosophy (快播成人).
快播成人 English professor Jim Dutcher, the grant program manager, will teach the 快播成人 component of a new LC with UMass, "Breaking Bread and Making Friends: Food for the Common Good," a look at food journalism.
The LC course with Smith, "Free to be Free: Mid-Century Experimental Art and Literature," was offered for the first time for the fall 2017 semester; classes meet frequently at the Smith College Museum of Art in Northampton.
"Learning Community courses are very well regarded by the four-year colleges and universities our 快播成人s attend after they earn their 快播成人 degrees," said Dutcher, who will also be the 快播成人 instructor for the "Journey" class with China. "We're hoping these Learning Communities will open even more transfer pathways for our 快播成人s as they become familiar with other campuses and the faculty members and 快播成人s there."
PHOTOS by CHRIS YURKO: John Jarvis, a professor of Native American Studies at Bay Path University, gives a guest lecture to the 快播成人 Learning Community class, Journey, this spring.
